Kidambi Srikanth happy with 'aggressive' performance in Rio Olympics 2016 quarter-final loss

Rio de Janeiro: Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth is happy with his performance after losing in the quarter-finals to two-time defending champion Lin Dan of China at the Olympics Games on Wednesday. Srikanth, playing in his maiden Olympic Games, went down fighting to Dan 6-21, 21-11 and 18-21 in a match lasting near about an hour. After his quarter-final battle, Srikanth was happy with his performance but just could not manage to turn down the Double Olympic champion Dan. [caption id=“attachment_2962132” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Srikanth Kidambi in action against Lin Dan at Rio Olympics 2016. AP[/caption] “I was never unhappy with the way I was playing. I was always playing well. It’s just that I couldn’t win or finish the matches well, although at times I was actually dominating,” the Guntur lad said after his defeat. On being asked about his tactics against the Super Dan he replied: “You can’t really plan anything against these kinds of players. And you can’t always repeat a game.” “There wasn’t a special strategy. We just wanted to be aggressive and not commit simple mistakes. Overall there wasn’t any special strategy, but to just stay in the rally,” added the 23-year-old. The 2014 China Open Superseries champion expressed his disappointment about making some simple mistakes in the first and could not wrap up the third game in his favour. “I was leading in the third game also, but I made a few simple mistakes. I shouldn’t have gone for a smash at 17-19. At a crucial stages I don’t think experience really matters, that smash was the game-changer,” said Srikanth. “Had I kept it simple it would have been 18-19. Again a pressure situation, but giving him that point made it 17-20 where he was in a better position than me.” The World No.11 pulled up his socks in the second game after being crushed in the first game 21-6. The second game saw a combination of diagonal and down-the-line smashes which the Chinese could not respond to. “I just wanted to give out the best in the second game. Didn’t really want to lose so badly as in the first, so thought of being as aggressive as possible. Thought of that game as only of 11 points. It really worked,” he said. Srikanth managed a space of two months to train for the Olympics. “Coming into Olympics, I got two months of break so got some really good time for training,” said former World No.3 Srikanth.